Cara Delevingne opens Joe Bates, Sid Bryan and Cozette McCreery's attitudey show with the best reference of AW13 so far, Paula Yates

When you're dealing with SISTER by SIBLING, there is a spirit greater than just stuff you might want to buy or not. Joe Bates, Sid Bryan and Cozette McCreery are proper London designers of the old school, effortlessly rebellious, with huge personality, connected to street spirit. With a very real cult – backstage at the ICA, where they held their catwalk, there was another, incidental SIBLING presentation so many friends, fans and well wishers were punctuated in scarves, sweaters and cardis from the label. Jerry Bouthier, whose soundtrack you can listen to below, wore his giant sequin leopard over a PiL t-shirt. A glance further to the scrum saw the joy their rambunctious knits bring to so many other images, public or not.

Why the noise? Because these clothes, however much they are a talking point, are happily thrown on with blue jeans off the runway, the way the designers wear them themselves. They're the life and soul but know when to obey. This season, Cara Delevingne opened 'The Natural Blonde', a collection dedicated to Paula Yates, with the delicious standfirst, "Nothing stands in your way when you're a blonde except perhaps the wardrobe door". As Bates, Bryan and McCreery say, "She was sexy and flirtatious, beautiful and clever and also a rarity since women loved her too. She must've been doing something right." These three know how to pull a reference.

Giant Sid knits worn with the bravado of The Big Breakfast boudoir and English roses that had a hint of Cadbury tin about them played against huge fox furs and a Marie Antoinette spraypaint crew, based on an artwork by Chad Wys.

So there art creeps in. And again, since backstage was a foyer in the middle of the Juergen Teller exhibit, Kurt Cobain on one wall, Vivienne Westwood's vagina not that far off. Repeat the question: is fashion art? Who's going to disagree?